Curt Hibbs has written a great tutorial called Rolling with Ruby on Rails. It takes the reader through setting up Ruby on Rails, scaffolding an application into immediate use, and tailoring the results. It's focus is especially on setting everything up and using it with a Windows machine. It has been published by O'Reilly with their ONLamp.com site. A small note from the introduction:
What would you think if I told you that you could develop a web application at least ten times faster with Rails than you could with a typical Java framework? You can—without making any sacrifices in the quality of your application! How is this possible?
I'm always hesitant to provide any exact measures of productivity increases, but the 10x number has been echoed by more than a few of the Java programmers I've known coming over. Of course, most projects involve lots more than just programming, so this would hardly mean a project completed 10x — or whatever multiplier you fancy — but the difference is indeed startling.
In any case, awesome work, Curt! Let this serve as an encouragement for other Railers to spread the good work by getting their knowledge published by outfits like O'Reilly.
Challenge by Anthony Baker on January 21, 19:15
Excellent article on Ruby. I primarily come from the front-end development world (CSS/XHTML/Design) with some baseline PHP experience and a healthy dose of modifying code in both PHP and Perl.
That said, I've been thinking about learning Ruby for a while now--figuring that I could get a lot of mileage out of this language--but have wondered: is it worth the time? How hard would it be for me to learn it?
With this tutorial, I have to say I'm sold.
Challenge by Metic on January 22, 16:44
@Anthony Baker
I'd say that Ruby might well be the easiest OO programing language to learn (intuitive, fast to write, strict logical OOP rules). You get productive much faster than with, say, Java or PHP.
A good (best?) place to start learning Ruby might be the free online book, "Programming Ruby, The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide" (1. ed.) at: http://www.rubycentral.com/book/
Btw, you might also be interested in reading the many comments to the O'Reilly RoR article here (some RoR criticism too) http://www.lightbody.net/~plightbo/archives/000144.html
Challenge by Søren Bak on January 25, 1:27
You hesitate to provide relative productivity measures for programmers using RoR and programmers using other frameworks and languages, but you don't seem to have any hesitation asserting that "the difference is indeed startling".
The main problem with that statement is that "startling" is conveniently vague and subjective. Is it a "startling" productivity increase of 1.2 or is it tenfold? Both seem startling to me, but even 1.001 might be startling to you. Assuming that you _know_ that the productivity increase is "startling", whatever the number is, I must conclude that you have access to experimental results or some other well-guarded secret that I don't. Otherwise it would just be methodology-flapdoodle, salesman gibberish, or even irrational belief based on hearsay among your converts. Knowing that you are way too smart to embark on such desparate adventures, I suggest that you reveal what truth lies behind your statement.
I have indeed not conducted any scientific experiments (though that would be fun). The anecdotal evidence available combined with my own (surely bias) experiences is what forms my notion of "startling".
I'd define anything capable of giving you twice the programming productivity (2x) as startling. Do note that this "silver bullet" rarely translate into a project done exactly that much faster. Programming is just one of many activities comprising the total effort in finishing projects.
And of course the term is vague. Without scientific data, it's hardly worth being exact. What is worth something, though, is retelling the experiences of people who've actually tried to switch from X to Rails.
The motivation is not to arrive at productivity factor exact down to three digits. The motivation is merely to entice and inspire programmers to give the environment a go for themselves.
That's naturally not going to happen if the only thing that can affect their opinion is scientific data and if they believe all anecdotal evidence coming out of the developers that have switched (conveniently labeled converts to undermine any of opinions as superstition) as lies or otherwise categorically false.
I am looking for a way to learn web programming and RoR caught my attention. (my experience is COBOL,C,ABAP you get the picture). I am going thru the onlamp tutourial and I see (3rd page):-
"Right now, I want to point out that this little bit of programming magic happened because we used a Rails naming convention: a singular model class name (Recipe) maps to a plural database table (recipes). Rails is smart about English pluralization rules, so Company maps to companies, Person maps to people, and so forth."
So
Recipe recipes (my comment: only change one thing)
Company companies (my comment: are you crazy)
Person people (my scream: AAARRGGGGGHHH!)
my rule would be: Add an "s" if its really necessary (is it?). And no messing with capitals
Still I havent lost hope that this RoR is an unpolished gem (but this is a little worrying)
I also noticed something weird with underscores but that is another story
Challenge by beloroin on January 26, 0:20
I've heard of Rails on many an occassion. It has been on my list of things to checkout, but never got around to it. Well... the OnLamp demo prompted me to get around to it! Don't get me wrong -- the demo video's are nice -- but you can't beat a step by step guide with comments and explanations that you can read/focus on as long as you want until you understand.
Anyway, Curt's wonderful OnLamp tutorial got me so excited that the first chance I had I started porting one of my web projects over. There's been a couple minor bumps along the way, but overall it's been a superb experience. You've done a great job David! I just wish I had checked it out earlier, it would have made things a lot easier on me. Keep up the great work!
Challenge by belorion on January 26, 0:20
I've heard of Rails on many an occassion. It has been on my list of things to checkout, but never got around to it. Well... the OnLamp demo prompted me to get around to it! Don't get me wrong -- the demo video's are nice -- but you can't beat a step by step guide with comments and explanations that you can read/focus on as long as you want until you understand.
Anyway, Curt's wonderful OnLamp tutorial got me so excited that the first chance I had I started porting one of my web projects over. There's been a couple minor bumps along the way, but overall it's been a superb experience. You've done a great job David! I just wish I had checked it out earlier, it would have made things a lot easier on me. Keep up the great work!
Curt Hibbs has written a great tutorial called Rolling with Ruby on Rails. It takes the reader through setting up Ruby on Rails, scaffolding an application into immediate use, and tailoring the results. It's focus is especially on setting everything up and using it with a Windows machine. It has been published by O'Reilly with their ONLamp.com site. A small note from the introduction: